Eight years later

I'll be brief today, because I hate to be negative.This is an awful day every year.It always seems like 9/11 is either crisp and beautiful (depressing, because that's the way that day was) or grim, gray, windy and wet like today (which is simply depressing).While we tend to "feel" the day most of all here in New York, and while I tend to focus non-stop on the loss of innocent life, especially 343 New York City firefighters—all those brave first responders who were only trying to help—we are left with very little to show for it. While thousands have fought and died in two wars launched in the name of 9/11, we have built a train station in the hole in the ground in Lower Manhattan.Yes, construction is progressing—buildings are rising around it—but it's been eight long years. It's fair to measure us, as a people, by how we recovered from that terrorist attack.The Pentagon was patched up, and yet we're still awaiting proper memorials in Pennsylvania and New York.We have remained safe, thank God.We just have to remember who we are, and what we're capable of.Those who died deserve nothing less.